Provisional Ballots Still Being Counted

Provisional Ballots Still Being Counted

Article excerpt

State election officials do not have answers to key questions
about how the emergency voting procedures brought on by superstorm
Sandy worked, including some last-minute changes that caused chaos
as thousands of voters sought email and fax ballots before polls
closed Tuesday.

The state won't know until at least next week how many voters
requested email or fax ballots, according to Ernest Landante,
spokesman for Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, the state's top election
official. Nor does it know how many voters took advantage of state
directives that allowed them to cast provisional ballots at any
polling place in the state or expanded hours for early in-person
absentee voting at government offices in the days running up to the
election.

Guadagno, faced with widespread power outages and voters forced
out of their homes by the superstorm, expanded email and fax voting
to displaced residents and first responders on Saturday.

The option is usually available only to a small number of
overseas voters and military personnel. But this time county
election offices were overwhelmed with thousands of requests that
flooded email inboxes and stressed fax lines as voters struggled to
fax or email their requests for the ballots in by the 5 p.m.
Election Day deadline.

On Wednesday, she and other county clerks turned their attention
to counting ballots and processing ballot requests in time to meet
new state deadlines. Her office received more than a thousand and
was done processing at least half of them by Wednesday afternoon.

Governor Christie said Wednesday that reports of problems were
"scattered and anecdotal," adding that he was "satisfied" with the
state's handling of the elections given the circumstances.

Faced with the prospects that county clerks wouldn't be able to
get ballots to voters by the time the polls closed, Guadagno
extended several election deadlines Tuesday afternoon. …